A new research from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research has found administering anti-cancer drugs at a hundred-fold lower dose than standard protocols could improve the tumour’s response to immunotherapy.

Professor Ruth Ganss, Perkins Head of Cancer Microenvironment from The University of Western Australia’s Medical School, said the study found an alternative path to high doses of anti-cancer drugs to fight cancers like melanoma, brain cancer or pancreatic cancer.

Professor Ganss said the microenvironment around solid tumours consists of “sticky” support tissue and blood vessels that feed the cancer and make the tumour impenetrable to cancer-fighting drugs and immunotherapy.

The study, published in Journal of Clinical Investigation, found that when the dose of anti-cancer drugs was considerably reduced, the tumour initially grew, but then the blood vessels surrounding the tumour normalised, allowing immunotherapy to penetrate the tumour.

“The anti-cancer drugs we are interested in are already clinically approved, this opens the way for us to propose new dosing and timing protocols for patients,” Professor Ganss said.

“Our clinical collaborators have been excited by the results that show an alternative method of administering drugs and immunotherapy together.

“The next stage in our research is a clinical trial where we will analyse tissue samples in patients with hard-to-treat cancers.

“My team and I are excited to have found new ways of modulating cancer blood vessels with already clinically approved drugs, and now we can hopefully produce an outcome which lends itself to more effective treatments for the very sick and prolong their lives.”

The Perkins researchers Professor Jonas Nilsson, Head of Melanoma Discovery, and Professor Alistair Forrest, Head of Systems Biology and Genomics, were among the research team, as well as scientists from the US and Germany.